Hurricane Fred, currently a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, is spinning harmlessly in the eastern Atlantic Ocean.

5-day forecast map of Fred

The National Hurricane Center first designated the storm Tropical Depression Seven on Monday, September 7. Fred reached Category 3 major hurricane status for a time, but has since weakened slightly.

The storm, situated about 645 miles (1040 km) west of the Cape Verde islands, is likely to dissipate before threatening any land areas, forecasters say. Fred currently has winds of 105 miles per hour (165 km/h) and is moving towards the northwest. Read More…

Reports are emerging that eight people suspected of hijacking the 4,000-tonne Maltese registered vessel Arctic Sea have been arrested by the Russian Navy, and are being detained on the frigate Ladny.

Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov confirmed that none of the detainees were members of the crew, and had boarded the vessel after approaching in a small dinghy, “using the threat of arms [and] demanded that the crew follow all of their orders without condition”. Read More…

Hurricane Ike is the ninth named storm, fifth hurricane and third major hurricane and the second category 4 of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season.

A Cape Verde type hurricane, it started as a tropical disturbance off the coast of Africa near the end of August, then tracked south of Cape Verde and slowly developed.

On September 1, it became a tropical storm west of the Cape Verde islands. By the early morning hours of September 4, Ike was a category 4 hurricane, hitting its peak of 145 mph (230 km/h) and a pressure of 935 mbar (27.61 inHg). That made it the most intense storm thus far in the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season. Read More…

Early on July 1, a strong and large tropical wave emerged off the coast of Africa, a Cape Verde-type hurricane that develops near the Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa. The average hurricane season has about two Cape Verde-type hurricanes, which are usually the most intense storms of the season because they often have plenty of warm open ocean over which to develop before encountering land. Read More…

Cape Verde was uninhabited when the Portuguese arrived in 1460 and made the islands part of the Portuguese empire. Due to its location off the coast of Africa, Cape Verde became an important watering station, then sugar cane plantation site, and later a major hub of the trans-atlantic slave trade, that would later form the contemporary African Diaspora.

In 1975, Cape Verde achieved independence from Portugal after the PAIGC long armed struggle in the jungles of neighboring Guinea-Bissau. Although there was no armed struggle in Cape-Verde, some cape-verdeans (number not known but likely to be some hundreds) who fought in Guinea Bissau asked for independence of Cape Verde.

Amilcar Cabral was an agricultural engineer by trade and lead the Guinea-Bissau revolution during the 1950, 1960s and early 1970s. Cabral began to form a People’s Assembly in preparation for an independent African nation, but a disgruntled former associate assassinated him with the help of Portuguese agents operating within the PAIGC on 20 January 1973 in Conakry, Guinea. His half-brother, Luís Cabral, became the leader of the Guinea-Bissau branch of the party and would eventually become President of Guinea-Bissau.